Feature Article

All the Signal Integrity You Can Shake A Stick At

Fish Fry Takes On DesignCon

by Amelia Dalton

Eye diagrams, Bert Scopes and more SerDes than anyone knows what to do with...what could it be? DesignCon of course. In this week’s Fish Fry, I look into why DesignCon was so popular this year and why signal integrity issues were the un-offcial theme of the show. I also interview Brad Griffin of Cadence about why we need power distribution analysis and why he thinks DesignCon is the best show of the year.

I also have another MAX V CPLD Development Kit courtesy of Altera to give away this week, but you’ll have to listen to the end of the broadcast to find out how to win.

Comments:

DesignCon was quite a busy show this year. In this week's Fish Fry, I check out all the reasons why a signal integrity heavy show might resonate with a wide range of engineers. What do you think was the theme of this year's show?

It's a very , very cold new year , so nothing is better than a hot cup of tea (or coffe , according to someone's taste).
So what about a smart cup warmer ? Not something commercial , no , it's not for a true nerd! With a Max V CPLD kit , an external H bridge (driving some power resistors acting as heaters), a temperature sensor , some IR proximity detector (to check the cup presence) and some logic , a very accurate temperature control could be easily obtained.
Maybe an external SD card with a I2C d/a converter could play some voice alert to notify the reaching of the ideal temperature.....
I'm just freezing...
Oh , if only I could have such a cool kit , my days could be warmer.....